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Born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809 to actress Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe and actor David Poe, Jr.

His father abandoned their family in 1810, and his mother died a year later from consumption. He was taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia. However they never formally adopted him.

They sailed to England in 1815. In 1815 he attended a grammar school in Irvine, Scotland before rejoining the family in London in 1816. He studied at a boarding school in Chelsea until the summer of 1817. He was later enrolled at the Reverend John Bransby’s Manor House School at Stoke Newington.

He briefly attended the University of Virginia studying languages and then attempted a failed military career.

He is known for Gothic fiction works. It is said he followed this genre to satisfy the public demand.]

His themes deal with questions of death, including its physical signs, the effects of decomposition, concerns of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning.

His works are mainly attributed to the dark romanticism genre

He also wrote satires, humor tales, and hoaxes. He used irony and ridiculous extravagance to drive the reader from cultural conformity and for comic relief.

&quot;Metzengerstein&quot;, the first story that Poe is known to have published and his first step into horror, was originally written as a burlesque satirizing the popular genre.

Much of his work was centered around using themes that catered for mass market demands.His fiction often included ideas pertaining to phrenology (study of bumps on the outside of the skull to explain a person’s character) and physiognomy (the study of facial features to explain a person’s character).